Essie Hors D'oeuvres

If you've checked out my About page, you'd know that I was a horrible, terrible, no-good nail biter for 20 years. I had the scraggliest nails and cuticles you'd ever seen, bitten way down past the quick so that my finger tips hurt all the time. When I began to take care of them and quit biting, I quickly learned that cuticle oil and cuticle nippers were my best friend, since anything remotely rough or jagged would send me on a nail biting spree or I would just sit and pick, pick, pick at it.

All that to say, I really am not a fan of textured polishes. I can't do the rough, sandy, gritty feeling on my tips. So when Essie released their Holiday 2013 Encrusted Treasures collection, I looked from afar, checked out swatches online and kept my distance. Pretty.....but definitely not for me.

Last weekend I was at a birthday party and my Essie nail polish hoarder partner-in-crime Bailey was there and she had these dazzling digits that I just loved. I kept staring at her nails. "What are you wearing?" I asked her. When she said it was Hors D'oeuvres from the Encrusted Treasures collection I was shocked. For one, it didn't have the rough texture like I thought it would, it was actually more of a platinum gold glitter, and for two I couldn't get over how it completely covered her nail in two coats. She paired her mani with Essie Absolutely Shore on the accent nail and it was stunning.

Last night Bailey and I got together for some girl time and some nail polish swapping (she also gave me a beautiful red pedicure which was long overdue since I'm 9 months pregnant and can't reach my toes anymore!) I HAD to try out Hors Hors D'oeuvres for myself. I wanted to completely copy Bailey's mani and pair it with Essie Absolutely Shore, which is a pale greyed out green, but I reached for Essie Go Ginza instead, a very light cherry blossom lilac. I really didn't expect Go Ginza to go with my skin tone; it was the only lilac from last years Resort, Spring and Summer line I didn't pick up and surprisingly it looks better on me than all the ones I DID pick up!

Hors D'oeuvres has fine gold glitter, with larger hexagonal silver pieces of glitter. There are also some very pale lilac glitter pieces thrown in the mix too, which my pictures don't capture, but the Go Ginza is a perfect compliment to them. When I applied the first coat mostly only the fine textured gold glitter stood out. I wasn't sure I was going to like this polish on my skin tone - it wasn't turning out at all like Bailey's. "Wasn't your's more silver I asked her?" But as I applied the second coat, the bigger silver glitter began to spread out on the nail, turning it from a gold looking glitter mani, to more of a white gold. I love the effect. When you apply this polish on it's own in two coats, the glitter lays down with the different size glitters overlapping each other creating the look of fish scales almost. It's very sparkly and pretty and like I said, I love the white gold effect it has which makes it doable for my skin tone.

Application was easy - 2 coats. Once I had applied topcoat and let it dry, I could feel rough edges here and there. I used a nail file to smooth those out, just at the edges of some of the tips. I can still feel a bit of texture, so a second top coat would be ideal for me (since I hate texture, haha), but it's really nothing major. I've been wearing this mani for the past 24 hours and I haven't picked at it yet. I do keep holding my hands up and admiring my nails though. Just a pretty white gold glitter fest goin' on.

Update: As much as I think this is a beautiful polish and I got tons of compliments when I wore it, I do have to mention that wear time was not great. Like, it chipped within less than 24 hours of applying it. Bad chipping. On 3 of my fingers. At first I thought it was maybe my base coat - it's one that I just picked up that I used last year all the time, but had been using Essie First Base and Orly Nailtrition as my base coat for the last 6 months. I figured maybe CND Stickey wasn't as good as I had remembered. I pulled the polish off those 3 nails and repainted with Absolutely Shore for an interesting accent nail mani, and gave my entire mani another coat of top coat. But the next day another Hors D'oeuvres nail chipped badly. I checked with Bailey and she had exactly the same problem - chipping within a day. She assumed it was her base coat as well, but we both used a different base and have completely different nail beds, so I'm sad to report I don't think this polish has lasting power :(